2025/11/24 by Bell, Nicole F., Cox, Peter, Newstead, Jayden L. +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.18722
openalex publication_date 2025/11/24 · openalex created_date 2025/11/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The neutron portal operator provides a theoretically motivated connection between the visible and dark sectors and features in several well-studied asymmetric dark matter models. This operator leads to dark matter induced nucleon decays that mimic the experimental signature of "ordinary" nucleon decays. In this work, we reinterpret Super-Kamiokande nucleon decay searches for n → π0 ν and p → π+ ν to constrain dark matter induced nucleon decays. For GeV-scale dark matter, we obtain lower bounds of O(1~\rmTeV) on the scale of the effective neutron portal operator. We also discuss the prospects for future searches at Hyper-Kamiokande and highlight the importance of a dedicated experimental analysis with reduced systematic uncertainties.